Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Tweaking the System

So- aiming to build back up. I'm coming at the whole thing pretty much from scratch again (current estimate of fitness is about 4:30 1500 / 16:40 5000 / 34:00 10,000 - very roughly and totally guesstimating) - so what can I work on from the beginning now?

Flexibility and stretching. This has been an area I've just been generally improving on over the last 6 months or so with regular opportunities to stretch at beginning/end of runs being taken advantage of.

Sleeping habits. They're poor to say the least but now I've started full-time work they're actually slightly better. It'll be a tough change when I start running in the mornings again though!

General strength. My body as a whole is generally not particularly strong - increasing use of body weight exercises and v. light weights should at the very least improve general strength and specifically work on legs and calves so they can take the pressure of running high and up on toes for 10+ miles.

Diet. Recently my diet hasn't been the greatest - although cooking for myself it's usually been the case of just lumping something into the oven most days. At lunch my diet has generally been better (usually a salad (mostly kidney beans to be fair)) and either a sandwich or jacket potato with cheese and beans. Breakfast is frequently skipped but I'm working at improving this. Main area to be worked on though is the evening meal which is going to involve more pasta (without drowning it in sauce) and grilled chicken/lamb. Cutting out the ludicrous quantities of fizzy drink might also help.

Massage- just generally using "The Stick" to ease up calves, quads etc. and try and deal with injuries and strains before they happen.